Bygone era steps out one last time

A swanky Stockton dance club founded about 1919 will cut its final rug this week, a victim of changing times and dwindling members who are no longer ready to rumba.

Michael Fitzgerald

A swanky Stockton dance club founded about 1919 will cut its final rug this week, a victim of changing times and dwindling members who are no longer ready to rumba.

No-Host Saturday Nighters will meet at the Stockton Golf and Country Club on Saturday night for a last waltz of formal attire, cocktails and big band music.

Well, semi-formal. Black tie optional.

"People can't fit into their tuxedoes anymore," said member Marlene Hnath, 77. "Well, I mean they can, but they look funny."

Older members say about 1919 a circle of card-playing women formed a dinner and dance group called No Host - meaning you paid for your own booze.

That was four years after the founding of the Stockton Golf and Country Club. And one year before Prohibition, which by all accounts didn't prohibit much in Stockton.

The women wanted to bring their husbands into a gala social scene: suits and gowns (and fur coats), cocktail hours, multicourse dinners and dancing to live big bands playing swing-era music.

"Waltz, fox trot, sambas and oh, gosh, rumbas," Doray Johnson said. "You know, all sorts of ballroom dancing. It's graceful and it's great music and just invites you to dance."

Members of this first group included prominent families such as the Hickenbothams of the hardware and steel company, the Grunskys of the bank of Stockton and the Athertons, Warren Atherton being the father of the GI Bill.

After World War II, many young marrieds moved to Stockton. They formed a second club, the Saturday Nighters, which also met at the country club.

The two clubs partnered in the 1960s. Or '70s. Memories differ.

By today's standards the club, for most of its existence, was exclusive to a fault: white people, white collar and traditional marriages. Divorcees were blackballed. Not the men, of course.

"That was one of the things that were rather comical," Hnath said. "If you were divorced, you couldn't come because your spouse could still be a member with his new wife. It wasn't supposed to be a singles party."

Suzanne Waters, 75, remembers the 1940s as a time of fewer luxuries and high-tech gadgets when people banded together in fraternal organizations and clubs and provided much of their own entertainment.

"It was a simpler world. And I think it was a happier world," Waters said. "In World War II, you all pulled together - you buy a stamp to buy a bond to buy a Jeep - or those other guys were gonna get you. So everything you did was communal. I think the music was the same thing. We were all in touch with each other."

"When it was going good," said Jim Dyke, 71, "It was the camaraderie of the people, together."

At the Christmas dance, tastefully sozzled swells would venture outside to the banks of the San Joaquin River to watch the annual Lighted Boat Parade drift by. Then pile back onto to the dance floor, as the big band played until midnight.

Of course, musical tastes changed. The country club lost its allure for many younger people.

And Father Time edged onto the dance floor, and put jitters in everybody's jitterbug.

As membership shrank, costs rose.

"I love dancing," said Reid Johnson, 82. "But I did not like the fact that each year the price went up. ... And of course we just had to meet at the country club in order to continue to be snooty when we could easily have gone to other venues and saved money."

At 5:30 p.m. Saturday, the club goes out in style: ladies in gowns, gents in tuxedoes - if they can shoehorn into them - filet mignon with syrah reduction, wine, the Big Band swing of Sacramento's John Skinner Band.

You can go: Reservations for $50 apiece are available until 5 p.m. today at swatersline@aol.com.